Another great MMORPG
I feel that Mabinogi is one of those games that push the MMO envelope of questing and click-grinding. There are many aspects to character development that make this game amazing.
I'll start off with all the casual "Life" stuff that is capable. In general, Mabinogi is a very freeform game that gives users a variety of jobs to handle. Here's the catch, there are no job classes. Your job is determined by the choices you make and what you want to do. You want to be a master cook and open up a shop? Do it. You want to be a tailor and customize clothes for people? Do it. You want to be a musician and compose and play songs for people on the street for food money? Do it. You want to simply play casually, not really in the game, but need something to kill time? DO IT. What I'm about to say isn't a comparison. Rather, it's just a statement. If you liked RO, and enjoyed the open nature of it, you'll like Mabinogi just as much. With light ambient music, and decent graphics, it's the RO2 you wish happened but didn't.
Now for battle system. I can hear your thoughts. "Hey Zerreth, it's an MMO, it's just another point-and-click-grind fest. What the hell's the difference? If you rave on about skills, then isn't that just pointless?" Yeah, you're right. Funny thing though, if it were like that, then I wouldn't be talking about the battle system, now would I?
The battle system itself is actually very simple, and the general course of battle is straight forward. However, it's a bit different from a point and click. After setting battle mode to manual, you can control the attacks of your character. Generally, your character has a set of 4 or so moves. Normal attack, Smash, Counter, Defence. There's magic and other physical skills but if I told you all that, then it wouldn't be fun would it? Also, like some other games, these 4 moves generally have a Rock Paper Scissors element to them. Smash breaks defence, defence breaks normal, normal breaks smash, and Counter breaks other physicals (so magic is the key against counter). However, your weapons all have a combo number on it, for example, some weapons have a combo of 2 and others have a combo of 3. Depending on your timing, and your luck dungeon crawling can be easy and hard, but not matter what, it will keep you on your feet. Casting any skill besides normal attack takes time to prepare (aka casting time) and so you can't just pull of smashes and defence so quickly. Timing is key and with good strategy, and team play battles are.... fun. (Oh my god I said it. I said battles are fun in an MMO)
Another aspect of the game that's interesting is age. Unlike any other MMO (though if you can find one, I stand corrected) your character ages. Depending on the game server, and what they set it to, your character will grow one year every week or so. This is a really cool aspect of the game. You can create your character at 10 years old and after playing a year or so, you've got an old man, with a beer belly bashing monsters.
Character customisation is really amazing. Besides being able to customize the weapon you own, you can hire tailors (other players who've dedicated themselves to tailoring) to customize clothes and change colours for you. It's like the paint dye system in RO, except you can modify everything about the clothes. This also helps in guilds where a dedicated tailor could tailor emblems and colour sets for other members.
There's a subtitle for Mabinogi. It's "Fantasy Life" and I'll stand by it really. When you become a tailor or a musician, your stats and additional skills don't help in battle. It's not like, when you become a bard, you learn skills to destroy monsters with music. You just play it, and so you can get by not fighting at all. It'll probably be harder, but it's possible. NPCs are programmed to have a "relationship" factor with your character. They remember who you are, if you've failed any quests, how often you've worked part-time for them and depending on what kind of person you are and your relationship with other NPCs, they can actually like you or hate you.
Now for the bad parts.
Since it is an MMO, there is grinding. Lots of it. Whether it's harvesting potatoes, milling corn, or bashing monsters, there's grinding. You may become more proficient because of grinding, but you're still grinding. There will always be grinding, no matter what form it takes. Get used to it. Mabinogi, in general, is a demanding game. Sure, it's a fantasy life, but it can also easily end up being a second job. Because of the "age" system, it may feel more like it than not.
You can technically get every skill in the game. It doesn't mean you'll be proficient at everything, but it's possible. Does that hinder me? Not really, but I know some who like having very defined specializations, and it really isn't a cakewalk from the start. Technically, you CAN start specializing your tailoring or music playing early on, but with such a low level, getting enough materials and money to support yourself while specializing is hard. You can do part time jobs, but the better ones often get filled up very quickly. Since it's still early in terms of when open beta started, everyone generally looks the same. You have many who have begun to tailor, but there are a lot of people who look too similar. Also, the newer generation skills haven't been unlocked yet and so, there's a limit to how well you can specialize a "job."